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MSFsouthafrica's blog

The rain has started to fall in Nepal: monsoon season has begun. Within two weeks it will pour heavily for two full months. All the cracks in the slopes of the mountains will be filled with water and will create more landslides and mudslides to deal with.

Phumeza Tisile, one of only a few South Africans who beat XDR-TB each year, will be going to the World Health Assembly to demand urgent change in the diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), change which will save lives.

Drug-resistant TB is on the rise in South Africa, with 15 000 cases diagnosed last year, double the number of cases recorded only four years before. Khayelitsha, where an Doctors Without Borders (MSF) project is located, has one of the highest burdens of TB in the world.

23 May marked the first International Day to End Obstetric Fistula. Here, MSF surgeon Dr Geert Morren talks about the physical and social distress that fistulas can cause, and why the issue needs attention.

Cholera has broken out in northern Niger in an area which is hosting large number of Malian refugees and which was hit by a cholera epidemic last year.

The cholera outbreak in northern Niger, which was declared by the health authorities on 11 May, has already affected more than 240 people, all of whom have received treatment from MSF. There have been six deaths. MSF has opened two cholera treatment centres in the regions of Mangaïzé and Ayorou, 150 and 200 km north of the capital, Niamey.

Heavy fighting over the last few days in Pinga, a town in the conflict-afflicted North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has made it difficult for Médecins Sans Frontières to carry out its vital medical work. Thousands of the town’s inhabitants have fled into the surrounding forests and eleven of MSF’s Congolese staff members are missing.

Shaba is 35 years old and has been living in Jamam camp with her family since December.

“We left our village Buk in September because there was fighting. In Buk, we had everything, but now we are naked. Four people in our village were killed in the fighting. My husband and I ran with our five children, but we got separated. We ran because of fear. My husband had three children and I took two. After one day’s walk, we met again in Kukur.